With the Rays and Nationals being unfamiliar opponents, one might think that little tension or bad blood exists between the two interleague clubs. But that certainly changed on Tuesday night during the first game of a three-game set in DC this week. In the bottom of the eighth, Rays' reliever Joel Peralta was ejected for having an excessive amount of pine tar on his glove. Peralta was a former member of the Nationals organization, and Davey Johnson alluded to that past familiarity with Peralta as the likely source of intel. Well, Joe Maddon did not take it in stride and felt that using that past intel was a breach of baseball etiquette. He used rather colorful language to express his sentiment -- quotes after the jump:
Via James Wagner of The Washington Post:
Maddon on glove incident: "It was kind of a p***y move to go out there and do that under those circumstances. I like the word p***y move."
— James Wagner (@JamesWagnerWP) June 20, 2012
Maddon took particular offense to the Nationals obvious reliance on their prior work with Peralta to ignite the suspicion, as opposed to snuffing it out from what they observed on the mound. Via Pete Kerzel of MASN:
"Insider trading right there," said Maddon. "It's bush. It's bogus, man. That's way too easy right there. If you had done some really good police work and noticed something, that's different. But that's way too easy. That was set up on a tee for them."
One of the likely sources of information on Peralta was his former Triple-A manager Trent Jewett, who managed the Rays reliever when he was with the Nationals' farm team in Syracuse. Peralta said he held no grudges against Jewett, even if he was the source for Davey Johnson:
"Trent helped me a lot," Peralta said. "I trust him and he's a great guy. I don't care who says something about it. I know Trent, he was like my dad in Triple-A, so if he did say something, I don't care. He was really good to me."
Peralta did say he was angry, but that the win served as some solace. We'll see if Maddon orders up some retaliation in the second game on Wednesday night.
For more news, analysis, and discussion on the Rays, visit DRaysBay. For more on the Nationals throughout this interleague series, visit Federal Baseball.